Nom de plume 2

The blog needs a new name as I will no longer be living the Gran Can Life.
Mr. C has pointed out that I should not make it geographically specific so that should we move again I won´t have to rename it again.

I´m all out of ideas so please feel free to bombard me with suggestions. I might even work out how to put a poll on my blog so we can vote on the ones I like best.
Or I might not.

And they´re off

Yes we are leaving this Atlantic rock on Monday.
Our possessions left last week and we should meet up with them in Barcelona on Monday from where Mr. C´s papa will collect us and take us, the cat and our stuff back to French France.

We had tried to get our stuff shipped direct to France, but the company we were using had their van impounded at customs and didn´t tell us until we had chased them up several times. This left us with two obvious options - pay a gazillion euros to have it shipped by the only other company on the island or leave it all behind.
I was for the first and Mr. C was for the second.
Fortunately he came up with the Barcelona options which turns out cheaper than the original transport.

It turns out that my life can be shipped out in two huge suitcases, three soft bags and eight grocery boxes with a combined weight of 200 kilos.

So the next time someone says that I look as if I have the weight of the world on my shoulders I can tell them exactly how much my world weighs.

Foiled again or HOW MUCH?

I was thinking on what to get Mr. C for his birthday in March and had the great idea of getting tickets to the France / England Rugby Six Nations match.
Then I thought, make it social invite my brothers and his brothers.

I was just compiling an email to my brothers and thought to check the prices first. Glad I did. How can a ticket price of over 300 pounds be justified? Just for a one seat? You would think it would be gold plated, with central heating and champagne on tap for that money. I´ve been to Twickenham a couple of times so I know it will be plastic, windy and with a long queue for the tea van.

Bah and humbug

How to get a passport for a baby

Baby C. can have both a French and a British passport so the Anlgo French paperwork race is on.
Unfortunately, due to a mis-communication between Mr. C and me, the Anlgo entrant got off to a late start as, at first I only ordered one copy of my birth certificate rather than two. When the second arrived I completed the paperwork and, being paranoid, enclosed every single piece of identification we had, my birth certificate, Mr. C’s birth certificate, Baby C’s birth certificate, our marriage certificate, Mr. C’s inside leg measurement and it went off a week later. And so, while most army’s march on their stomachs, British bureaucrats run on tea so we expect the British entry back first even though it went off after the French.
The hardest part of this process has been getting a picture of the baby. The French guidelines require the head to measure exactly 32mm from chin to forehead in the picture, which was a problem as it seems our baby has a tiny head and it took three goes before the man could get 32mm. Unfortunately we were so intent on the head measurement we didn’t notice that the cuff of my jumper was showing in the photograph which means that it may or may not get passed by the French passport people.
While the English are a little more forgiving on the size of a baby’s head in the photograph they are very strict on the paper that is used. It has to be blank on the back. The local studio we went to only had Kodak branded paper and so after a call to the helpline who helpfully told us the photo would be rejected we went along to another studio for another set of photos. By this, the third set, we were quite the experts at holding up a 9 week old baby for head shots so it only took a few minutes. But still no blank paper, it seems it isn’t possible on the island. Who knows why? Still the chap seemed confident the photos would be okay so we chanced it and off it all went.

Mr. C is very frustrated that Baby C. has to have a passport, and while I understand and can sympathise with the reason behind it – to stop one parent taking a child abroad without the other parent’s consent – when it comes to doing the paperwork it can be rather frustrating.

Still Baby C. should be the proud owner of a probably, British passport in a couple of weeks.

By the way because Baby C. and I have British passports it means that countries are required to be nice to us, the Queen says so.

Shopping dilemma

The big question worrying me this week is “what do I do with the last €25 of my birthday money?”

So far I have spent my birthday money on a new handbag and then when I found out we were moving I brought another humumgous bag to carry books, baby stuff, woolly hats etc on the flight, and some wintery baby clothes.
So now I have the last €25 of the money my dad gave me, thanks dad!

And the options are:

• The red leather handbag, which is the one I really wanted, but saw it after buying my first bag but it wasn’t big enough for a carry on and so now it seems rather excessive to buy three new bags, but it is so cute!
• A haircut. It is six months since my last one and I know it is time because I wear it in a pony tail every day. That plus I am looking a little more like Worzel Gummage and less like Aunt Sally.
• Or, the final option, the woolly poncho thingy I saw when window shopping. It is cosy wooly with a polo neck, short in length with big buttons doing up the sides. It sounds a lot worse than it looks, but it would be very handing for staying warm while breastfeeding in the snowy Alps.

Actually if I drew out mum’s birthday money I could have all three, but I would feel guilty about spending it on me when we have no income and are living off our savings.

I think it is a case of all or nothing and day by day I decide one way or the other.

SWAP 2009

One good thing about moving to France is that it is seasonal which means more clothes! And in particular winter clothes which after three years of summer clothes I do miss.

Once we decided to move I decided to review my wardrobe. Virtually none of my clothes here are practical for an Alpine adventure. The new winter things I brought in London last year are in storage at my dad’s and as those are really just a couple of knit dresses they are not going to be practical for breastfeeding. So I really do need to think about new clothes.

I started with an inventory of my wardrobe.
After photographing all my clothes, at least the ones that aren’t jeans, t-shirts or maternity wear, it is clear that I have lots of pretty evening type tops and not much else. What a friend of mine describes as “Thelma and Louise tops” because you wear them with jeans and heels and look as if you are on some kind of glam, slightly sleazy, road trip.
Aside from being impractical for everyday wear, most of these tops were made or bought in my pre-baby life and so fail to accommodate Dolly and Pammy. (why can’t my new frontage have names?)
As well as the tops, I have some lovely linen skirts, a knit dress and some cosy cardigans.
None of the tops match the skirts and one of the cardi’s doesn’t go with anything apart from jeans.

The last part of the cataloguing was to line up all my t-shirt tops and photograph them to identify the colours I wear and so make a colour wheel. The idea being that if I use colours from this selection in my new wardrobe they will match into my existing wardrobe.

To plan my new wardrobe I have to identify what is missing from my current wardrobe for my daily life. My daily life in the Alps will be looking after Baby C, much the same as it is here but with snow, mountains and lots of French folk.

So what is my wardrobe missing? Warm tops that are adaptable for breastfeeding, winter skirts and any trousers that aren’t jeans.

I also need a new coat. Even though I do have a lovely coat I made waiting for me at the French-in-laws it is a very slim cut so I am not sure that it will allow for woolly layers underneath and fasten up over my new shape.

After deciding all this I was mooching around my sewing forum and found that the Sewing With a Plan 2009 competition has been launched. I wanted to do it again this year and now it fits perfectly with my wardrobe re-imagining.

As per last year there have to be four bottoms, six tops and one coat or jacket, giving you 24 outfit variations before you add the jacket into the mix. The twist this year was that the wardrobe had to reflect a week in our life and our current shape. In other words sewing for now rather than the future, in this way all the pieces would get worn.

For myself I have also decided to base the wardrobe on the colours of the non-matching cardigan so that it gets worn more and doesn’t get left in the wardrobe feeling lonely and left out.

I have stuck to patterns I already own, apart from the coat which is yet to be decided. From my storyboard you can spot that I have an extra skirt and an extra top, this is because I can’t decide on what to go for.



















For the bottoms, I need to decide between the two denim skirts.
The vogue skirt is a tried and tested pattern but I think the Burda one is a bit more funky, mind you Mr. C hates it, especially the pockets.
For the tops I am in two minds on the orange tee. The camisole might replace it as I don’t have any nursing camisoles.

So that’s my SWAP 2009 plan.
Now I just need to get the fabric and sew the plan.

The truth about baby books, or, babies don’t read Gina Ford

It seems to me that the truth about baby books is that they are there to train the parents not the child. If they were aimed at the child well then I would just leave the book propped up in the cot and in no time at all I would have a baby that slept through the night, could tell the time and wake up at regular and predictable intervals and could latch on the breast and feed with no fuss.

Another truth might also be that the first book is to make you paranoid so you go out and buy lots more, thus sustaining the baby book industry.

When I ventured to buy books I checked out the review on Amazon first but for every review that said “this is the ONLY book you need and your child will grow into a useful and prosperous member of society” there was another that said “this book advocates child cruelty and your baby will grow into a maladjusted, ASBO toting hoody if you buy it”

So I decided to ask my friends which books they had.
My friend Lis came up with a list of three. Blooming Birth
, which I talked about here, the Dorling Kindersley Complete Book of Mother and Baby Care. Which she recommended as being informative but old fashioned, but worth it because everyone looks so awful in their 80’s hair and Lady Di smocks that you feel like a glamour puss even with baby sick in your hair and milk stains on your chest.

I found both these books very helpful and Mr. C liked the baby care book too as it has lots of illustrated how-to’s which are very useful for a chap that hasn’t had much contact with babies before.

The final recommendation was The Contented Little Baby Book
by Gina Ford. My eldest brother also recommended this, with a; “brilliant book, only book you need, we did it with the girls and they turned out well.” I didn’t like to point out that he had gone back to work and it had been my sister-in-law that had had to look after the babies. When I talked to her, she had a slightly different view of Gina. In fact most of the people I have spoken to have a similar view of Gina, one I now share.

I read it all the way through and I understand Gina’s main points and they seem pretty sensible to me. Get as much food down the baby in daylight hours so she will not wake with hunger through the night and don’t let her sleep too much in the day. Seems simple and she gives you detailed plans for various weeks of baby’s life to help you do this. My only problem with this, apart from the book being quite badly written, very patronising in parts (it tells you how to sort your washing – for goodness sake!) and littered with comments along the lines of “this study by Mr. Doctor Know-it-all, confirms what I’ve been saying for years”, is that my baby can’t read so she didn’t know what she was supposed to be doing when.

I would start each week thinking that this would be the week to crack it, but I would last a couple of days and then it would all slide because I wanted to do something not on Gina’s schedule. Something like leave the house to get milk or jump around to the Jungle Book CD or eat apple strudel. Really there has to be more to life.

Perhaps all the case- studies in the book have worked because Gina was hired to help so the parents had a third person helping them and taking over when they were tired. You certainly need a strong resolve if you are to go this way without Gina on hand.

In the next round of book buying I decided to use the recommendations in the Blooming Birth book as I had found the book to be so useful that I thought they would have some sensible suggestions.
I now have a very good book on breastfeeding
, a beautifully laid out and informative baby and child care book by Miriam Stoppard
and a book about healthy sleep by Dr. Marc Weissbluth
.

Now the Dr. Marc book is quite interesting. It gives you reasons why your baby needs to sleep, apart from the obvious one of so its parents don’t go stark raving mad. It also tells you how sleep relates to various stages of your child’s development and what to expect to happen when, and then it gives you strategies for helping your child into sleeping patterns.
What I like is that it presents options rather than just one way of doing things. It tells you what you should aim for and presents various ways of going about it. It also recognises that you might not succeed every time.

And so far Dr. Marc has been bang on the button. Baby C. did get more whiney and fussy in weeks four, five and six, then she got less fussy and a bit easier to settle. Best of all, now at eight weeks she suddenly decided that she could sleep through the night. She did two nights sleeping all the way through and has done a few with just waking up once at around 3 am, this from waking at least twice most nights and some nights every two hours.

Overall, I would say that in a stand up fight Dr. Marc would kick Gina’s butt, not least because his book is about three times as thick as hers.

Before and after

Before





























After

Brand England

Since we decided to move to France I have been strengthening Brand England. At first I thought my increased tea intake correlated to being at home all day looking after Baby C, but now I see it is infact a pre-emptive strike at retaining my Englishness in the face of being the only English person surrounded by Frenchies.

The most notable aspect, as mentioned, is an increased tea intake. From one to, at least, three mugs a day. All mugs of tea to be accompanied by biscuits, either digestive or rich tea, with a nod to the French the rich tea biscuits can be covered in Nutella, actually I recommend it.

With Mr. C also at home I have got him drinking the tea too. Previously this was reserved for when he had a hangover. I still don’t agree with the three teaspoons of sugar he has in his tea but to get him onto a cup a day with digis for dipping is an achievement. He even concedes that the French do not know how to make tea and that in this the English are the superior.

Tea clearly drives the old Empire and is the reason that the British embassy in Madrid can make a passport for Baby C in two weeks compared to the month it will take the French.

Further efforts to reinforce Brand England will see me trying to include “spiffing” and “what-ho old chap” into everyday conversation.

How men think

Is something that bemuses me on an almost daily basis.

First I have to say that I think myself very lucky with Mr. C. He cooks well and often, he isn’t averse to housework though needs a little prompting and he enjoys and takes his turn in looking after Baby C.
However he is a man and his way of thinking is sometimes a little strange to me and this extends to his view on housework.

According to some study somewhere it is still the woman in mixed couples that does the majority of the housework, even if both partners are in full time work. This shows just how far we have to go yet before fellas understand it isn’t all women’s work. Or it shows how far women have to go to get over the “oh for goodness sake just give the mop to me” and “if you want the laundry doing properly, do it yourself” reactions.

For myself I try to get over these using two strategies. The first is to appreciate that Mr. C is doing something and even if it isn’t how I would do it then the world won’t stop turning and the floor will be clean enough. The other is for jobs that I am fussy over – that would be the laundry – I do it all myself so that I don’t get annoyed with him doing it his way. I did try to give him a Madame C laundry masterclass, but the effects didn’t last and he clearly thought I was embracing my inner control freak a little too much. So now I do the laundry and everyone is happy.

I have wondered off the point but what I was trying to tell you about was an incident with the Mr. C, the broom and the kitchen floor.
Mr. C cleaned and mopped the floor and a couple of days later I said it needed doing again and he looked down, freaked out at the sight of a bit of onion peel and said; “but I just did it the other day and it was clean” or something to that effect.
I answered along the lines of; “yes, but it has got dirty and needs cleaning again”

Now here is the curious thing, why does Mr. C believe that once a job is done it should stay done regardless of the march of time? He has this attitude with Baby C’s nappies. If she is grizzly he might ask me when I changed her nappy or if she is clean. I usually reply that she was clean when I changed her but might have done a poo since then.

I am not always sure if some of Mr. C’s odd views come out odder because he isn’t using his first language but I am pretty sure this isn’t one of those times. In the end the only way I could explain why I found the view silly and slightly frustrating was to use a diving metaphor. It would be the same as Mr. C complaining that a full cylinder didn’t stay full after and got used for diving. So now when Mr. C starts along these lines I can just say to him; “but this cylinder was full when I filled it!”

Status report or All the things I should have told you but couldn’t

Apart from the lil event of Baby C’s arrival there have been strange going on’s afoot with our Gran Can life.

Long story short we are leaving the island and I will have to think of a new title for my blog.

Short story long……

In the autumn last year Mr. C decided he wanted to sell the divecentre. He put it up for sale and had a few enquiries but nothing that came to anything until the end of the year. The gentleman that was interested wanted to come over and see the centre but kept putting it off from one month to the next. In the meantime I was up the duff and so this added a new angle on events.
We decided we would aim to sell and move off the island by May or June. If we managed to leave before then we would go to England as I can get well paid work there and qualify for maternity benefits and if it was after we would go to France as it would be easier for Mr. C to get a job for after I had had the baby.

Well it didn’t work out like that. The chap came with his wife, liked what he saw, made an offer lower than we liked and then during negotiations pulled out completely. This was in May sometime. So we decided to make the summer here and see what turned up.
In the end nothing turned up and we made the decision to close the divecentre. The next new plan being that Mr. C would get a diving job with another centre and we would stay until the following summer. This way we would get to enjoy our first year of being parents without the stress of the business or of relocating again.

Well that hasn’t worked out either.
Mr. C had a job sorted and started two weeks after Baby C was born. All was going well with him when in the third week his bosses friend came out to visit. One evening in the bar this chap, who had been on the sauce all day, clapped Mr. C around the ears and in doing so burst his eardrum.

This is a very bad thing for a dive instructor. You cannot dive with a burst eardrum and if you can’t dive then you can’t really work. Eardrums can take up to eight weeks to heal so we weren’t sure how his boss was going to react. In the end the chap that did it was persuaded to give Mr. C something towards his lost earnings. But that didn’t turn out so well as it was only about ten days pay and he gave it to Mr. C’s boss who said Mr. C had to go to work for it.
Which from his point of view looks like his boss is getting a worker for free as it isn’t his money which is paying him.

On the positive side his boss said he would keep Mr. C’s job open for him. So we figured that Mr. C could pick up some bar work for a couple of months to help pay the bills. But then his boss decides he wants to get a full time replacement and the only way to do so is to offer a four month contract. So Mr. C has a job but not for four months.
So we have to decide if we stay or go. We decided to go. And to top it all off Mr. C’s ear healed two days after the new instructor arrived, so now he can dive but has no work.

After all that the upshot is that we are going to France to stay with the French-in-laws for a couple of months while we regroup and try to make a plan for the next few years that isn’t made in a matter of minutes and won’t be derailed by daft things happening to us.

We are extremely bummed by this chain of events. We were really looking forward to this year, to having a relatively stress free life in which we could get to know our baby, get to grips with being parents and begin to get to know the island beyond the resorts and divesites that have dominated our life here so far.
We had installed ourselves nicely in our new flat and had started to carve our a little life and routine in the new town. So all in all, things were going well.

Since we made the decision we have been trying to look on the bright side. This mostly involves one or other of us listing good things about living in France. This takes place rather randomly. So far the list goes something like this (in no particular order);

• Great food
• Great wine with more than just Spanish wines to chose from, and it’s cheap
• Proper big supermarkets
• Maximum 40 hour week with two days off each week and five weeks holiday a year
• A snowy Christmas in the Alps
• Free babysitting while staying with the French-in-laws
• A more predictable postal service (I hope)
• Seasons and having to have lots more clothes to choose from
• Administration systems we (at least Mr. C) understands
• Being closer to family and friends

So that’s what we are up to at the moment.